*Image credit Pixabay

Eating plenty of fruits may help reduce the risk of many diseases like high blood pressure, heart disease, digestion and let us live a healthy life.

With  modern transport and cold storage facility, now it is possible to have fresh fruits practically all the year round.Exotic fruits grown in  far away foreign lands are also easily available to us.Moreover demand of fruits is there throughout the year.

Given the known benefits of fruits in our diet, some farmers and traders resort to unsafe practice of harvesting fruits by indiscriminately using toxic chemicals to grow, ripen and make fruits appear fresher or even last longer, particularly during early and off-season.

These farmers and whole-sale fruit sellers who in order to make quick money, show no regard for human health and use CaC2 (Calcium Carbide) to  artificially ripen fruits.CaC2 (Calcium Carbide) is very dangerous forthe human body.Prolong consumption of fruits ripened using CaC2 may cause deadly disease.

Ripening, in general, is a physiological process which  makes the fruit edible, palatable and nutritious. In nature fruits ripen after attainment of proper maturity by a  sequence of physical and biochemical events and the  process is irreversible. During ripening fruits soften, change colour and  develop characteristic aroma and flavour. There is also a reduction in sourness (acids) and increase in the sweetness, etc.

How to identify artificially ripen fruits?

If the fruit has uniform colour then it may have been artificially ripened.For example, a bunch of bananas having a uniform colour or when tomatoes are uniformly red or mango and papaya are uniformly orange/yellow then they are likely to have been artificially ripened.

The naturally ripened fruits are not uniformly yellow; rather, they are of green and  yellow.In case of bananas if you see the stems as dark green whereas the fruits are all yellow, then its a sure sign that it has been artificially ripened.

Precautions:

Washing the fruits under running water for a few minutes may help minimize the chemical contents, if any, adhering to the fruits. Also seasonal fruits should be purchased during its high season and not early or late.

Adopting these simple steps will surely help us to buy healthy fruits for ourselves.

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